The security of your data in the cloud

Attention has been drawn to the security of the cloud, since news has emerged of dozens of recently stolen and leaked revealing celebrity photos. An anonymous hacker has claimed to access more than 100 celeb Apple iCloud accounts, by figuring out weak passwords and answering easy security questions. With Apple’s cloud security measures thought to be unfailing, this raises questions about protection of stored personal data in the cloud.

The cloud allows you to remotely store, backup and access photos, files and other documents over the internet, versus from your computers local hard drive. Cloud computing has become so widely used that many individuals are unaware they are even accessing it in some form, from online email programs to social networks.

As We Become A More Mobile World

We are becoming an anywhere access, mobile society, and the cloud is making this possible. In an age where it is tough to find someone whose does not own a smartphone, cloud services are becoming more available to offer file sharing and storing convenience, all vying for your business by constantly lowering their prices. However, are you choosing price over security? Looking at the many different cloud service setups you will see that not all cloud solutions were built equal. Some of the large file sharing companies are already known for scanning and mining your data, others have centralized cloud systems that merge all user data together and some only encrypt data during transfer, but decrypt it once it reaches their servers, so they can access it.

As we see the celeb photo controversy play out, we are finding out most smart phones will automatically send pictures and other data by default to the cloud, due to most users not backing files up on their own. Your files no longer are beginning and ending with the original device they were created with, effectively giving control of your data to your service provider. The solution is to turn off this default backup setting and remove feeding data and images to the cloud as a backup. But how safe can this be? A large percentage of users will lose, damage or have their mobile devices stolen, without a backup option being available.

MyFiles by Netsonic

MyFiles is focused on security, and goes beyond simple file sharing and storing.

• Unlike large service providers, we do not mine user data for commercial reasons, or to sell.

• Encryption keys being held by your service provider allows them access to your files. With MyFiles you hold the encryption key, so data stays in your control. File encryption occurs before the file leaves your local device, and is transmitted to our servers, and remains encrypted while at rest, making it impossible for us to access.

• A centralized cloud system opens private data up to all users. Your account resides on a private cloud server, dedicated solely to you, and independent of other users content.

• Your data is sent, shared and retrieved over a secure SSL connection and transparently stored, while at rest, with AES 256-bit encryption.

• Unlike other providers, we cannot give your information to government agencies like NSA or for the Facial Recognition Database. The reason for this is because we ourselves are unable to access it.

• Data resides only here in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Your data is not spread over a half dozen unknown machines across the globe.